ximilialog | MISSION: THE SLEEPER

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MISSION: THE SLEEPER

● ● ● M I S S I O N 3 . 1

INTRO • MAY ALL YOUR BACON BURN • IF YOU HAVE A DREAM DON'T WAIT • FYI

// INTRO. beam us down!  

It’ll be during the early hours in the morning when the communications device pings the Orbers in the midst of whatever you may be doing: whether it’s sleeping in, having a leisurely breakfast, or being deep into whatever task it is you’ve planned for the day. Viveca’s familiar voice filters through, a cheerful interruption.

// VIVECA.AI

Hi everyone. We’ve got your next mission ready, but I was asked to give you the file a little bit in advance so you could prepare better… so here it is. I don’t think I can delay the teleportation machine more than a day, so early tomorrow morning it’ll be time to go. The situation in Kilnan is a little strange, so I’ve prepared an antidote for you just in case. Pick yours up from the infirmary before you get going. It’ll only work once, so be careful. The orb is somewhere in the castle… I trust you’ll find it. Good luck.

Without any further fanfare, the comms go silent and you’re left with a new mission file and some rather concerning information within the report about a sleeping sickness. But instead of the immediate departure like you might be used to, you’ve been given the day to rest up and prepare for the trip down. So pack your things, grab the antidote, maybe enjoy a hot shower and a good night’s sleep … or if you’re not the sleeping kind, find a good song to jam to and get you motivated for what’s to come.

The next morning before most of your alarms will go off, the teleportation machine will hum to life, crackling with stored energy. Those who have been here for longer might notice this difference and what Viveca had meant when she said she didn’t think she “could delay it for more than a day”. As soon as you’ve been gathered together, you’ll feel the pull — and a tug that removes you from the station.

For what might seem like an agonizingly long moment, you simply hang there in stasis, white light surrounding you accompanied by a strange, ethereal chorus that whispers in your ear, informing you of the goal currently set before you and the cost to achieve it, as well as the exchange for its power —

But before you can venture to open your mouth and respond, the light around you materializes into a fog of cool, damp cloud cover. The moment your feet touch solid ground and the fog parts as you move through it, you’ll see a marble road ahead.

Welcome to the country of Kilnan, Orbers.

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// PART I.MAY ALL YOUR BACON BURN  

Around you, the courtyard of the Crystalline Palace opens up — white marble pavement, extravagant sculptures half-covered in moss, and fountains that have long since dried up — its splendor abandoned and left for time to neglect like a long forgotten secret.

If you look behind you, you’ll see nothing but clouds; and underneath you is mostly open sky. Faintly (if you really squint), you might be able to make out the grassy earth somewhere below the clouds but the distance seems a little treacherous to even consider taking your chance to get there. As such, the only way is forward — up the wide steps and through the imposing, but majestic, double doors of the castle.

1.0 Once inside, a seemingly empty castle greets you. There are no servants rushing to greet you, no hustle and bustle that you'd expect from a castle this size... just silence.

You’ll find yourself standing in the middle of a grand foyer. Daylight filters in through tall windows framed with long flowing curtains that seem to sway just a little, even though the casements are clearly shut. Further in, you’ll notice multiple staircases leading you to the upper floors, some of them straight, and some of them curved, while others wind upwards in a seemingly endless direction towards one of the towers. Most of these stairways will appear to be your regular run-of-the-mill means of egress, but the moment you turn away and look back to where you’d just come from, you might notice that the stairs have disappeared … only to be right in front of you when you glance back. Another set of stairs may take you in one direction, but try and retread your path and you’ll find the very same staircase you’d just used will take you somewhere completely different.

These stairs might be playing tricks on you, or maybe you need to get your eyes checked.

From the foyer, hallways appear to sprawl in all directions of the wind, some of them lined with paintings from a very deft hand (or hands). Walk along and peer at one of these incredibly detailed depictions of vibrant rich cities, lush idyllic countrysides, alluring, well-manicured gardens and find that all of them seem so incredibly lifelike — almost uncannily so. If you study one for too long, you’ll find yourself losing focus of the world around you, only seeing the painting that beckons you forward … and helpless to resist, you take a step forward and wind up within the world of the painting. Is it as beautiful as it seemed from its frame? Of course it is. Just look at that colour! Feel that breeze! Take a deep breath of the air around you. But remember that you probably can’t stay here forever; you have to get back. And the way to the castle is … somewhere here. You just have to find it.

2.0 Inside the castle, your task is clear: find the orb.. and for some of you, perhaps try and look for the people sent to the castle before you. To do that, you’ll need to search through the different rooms and accompanying towers… but the moment that you try to, it becomes apparent that this is no ordinary castle and the rooms are not exactly just rooms either. Some have stark differences in scale: in one room you enter, all the furniture within appears to be made for giants; while in another room, everything has been shrunk down to its miniature.

Further still, another room will appear to be deceptively normal… but the moment you step past the threshold, the door will lock shut behind you and then fade into the wall like it’d never been there at all. You only have one clear objective then: search through the room for a way to get out… or make yourself a way out.

3.0 When you enter this next room, you find yourself having to pause to take it all in, it’s so incredible that you can barely believe your eyes: whatever this room holds within seems to cater specifically to your individual interests and desires like it sees into your soul. It might offer rare books to those interested in knowledge, the best entertainment for those who seek self-indulgence, decadent foods you’ve always wanted to try for those with a discerning palate. What a wonderful time! So wonderful, in fact, that it’s too easy for you to forget the passing of time … what was it you were doing before? Nothing important, surely. Right?

4.0 There are rooms that don’t even seem like rooms at all once you’ve entered them: you open a green painted door and instead of the marble floors, you step right into a hedge maze. When you turn to glance over your shoulder, you’ll find that the door has vanished, and your hand lingering on the door knob is now clutching at a cluster of prickly foliage. With nowhere else to go but to brave the labyrinth, you move forward. The path you take will twist and wind until you realize that the best-case scenario here is coming face-to-face with a deadend rather than the other delights that the maze holds in store. One end greets you with a particularly angry tree, hell-bent on wiping you off the face of this plane; at another turn, a creature that looks suspiciously like a Sphinx, sitting on her hind legs and blocking the way, might ask you a riddle in exchange for passage; and there is always a chance that the right-hook you take will pull you through a cloud of deceptively beautiful fluttering dots of lights that whisper to you with the voices of people long-dead before you.

5.0 Another room will pull you — quite literally — into the eye of a storm. Hail and rain pours down, drenching you immediately, while lightning flashes in the open sky — it almost looks like the countryside you saw beneath the castle, but that couldn’t be, right? You don’t remember leaving the castle… And more importantly — the rain really is coming down, and that lightning is striking dangerously close. It might be wise to find some temporary shelter, perhaps a little cottage to hide in, or at the very least, get to that overturned hay cart and hide beneath it — and wait for a chance to find your way back to the exit door … wherever (or whenever) it may appear.

6.0 Not all of the castle will be entirely strange, however; there, too, are regular, non-eventful rooms scattered within. A large dining room with the table set for one, a thin layer of dust collecting over the silverware, for instance; a library filled with old tomes and scrolls that don’t appear to have been touched in years; a storage room full of strange items; and, if you make it into the cellar, you’ll find the kitchen, its food storage still robust despite the fact that some of the meat has begun to gather mold, and some of the vegetables have darkened and gone a little mushy. On the layer of dust settled over the floor, there is exactly one set of footprints, perhaps smaller than you’d think, but even those seem at least a number of weeks old.

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// PART II.IF YOU HAVE A DREAM DON'T WAIT  

It’s almost too easy to become distracted by all of the strange happenings within the castle, easy enough to forget about the sickness you’ve been warned about — and perhaps, with so far there having been no sight of anyone actually affected by it, it’s easy enough to think that there might have been a mistake or a misunderstanding. But the longer you spend within these beautiful white stone walls, you become aware of a whisper: quiet at first, the barely-there breath of a language you know you understand and yet you still can’t quite grasp it, the meaning frustratingly close to the edge of your consciousness. And the more you try to touch those not-words and too-light-whispers, you feel a little dizzy before the world around you suddenly changes.

7.0 At first you think you’ve simply fallen into another room, just another hidden trap-door or painting you’d stepped into. So perhaps you don’t even realize that you’ve fallen under a spell at all when everything around you is just … dark. Beneath your feet, if you focus your gaze, is a still surface of a black lake glinting — and yet you are not sinking. Every step that you take forward creates a little ripple across the glassy surface. As your eyes adjust, so do your surroundings begin to take shape. It will be different for everyone, this dreamscape morphing and melding into a scene (an island, a meadow, a small patch of forest, or will it remain the lake?) or setting that reflects you — it’s where your soul feels most at ease … for now.

8.0 As expected, the dreamscape does not stay still for long. The more time you spend here, the more it seems to draw inspiration from your memories. Suddenly you find everything around you materializing into solid form, the experience being dragged from the depths of your mind into manifesting a vivid study in touch and sight and smell and sound. It’s something you’ve already been through before, but whether you like it or not, this memory is being replayed around you and now you’re the observer … you and the lucky (or unlucky) person who has entered this memory with you.

Do you stay, or do you try to run from it?

9.0 The stronger the memory, the stronger its effect on you: the heaviest memories, whether they’re happy ones or sad ones, may latch onto your subconscious so tightly that it pulls you right into the memory itself.

Just as these dreams often do, it’s hard to tell whether this is made up or reality itself — perhaps you remember that this has happened before and you’ll try to change the course of events. Or perhaps you think you’re living this memory for the first time. Whatever it might be, you find yourself fully convinced of its authenticity … but the power of belief is a dangerous thing. Beware that the injuries sustained in this state will become real, visible to those who might be observing this — and observing you — from the outside. (You know the line: if you die in the game, you die in real life.)

NOTE: These strong memories might also draw you into them as yourself from that time, so someone wandering into this re-lived memory might find you there as a child, a teenager, a young adult, or perhaps someone with the same or a different face — whatever you were at the time of the memory.

10.0 Once you become aware of these memories, you may push them away or will them to stop. The moment that you do, the dreamscape will immediately shift to become its unaltered state once more. The other way to escape these memories is to leave. At the edge of your dreamscape, you will find that the air shifts and shimmers just a little differently than the rest of this space … and once you get close enough, the doorway will open to let you out of your dreamscape and into someone else’s like a chain of several small links. If your dreams are more akin to nightmares, perhaps you enter the door willingly. But just as likely, you might simply get too close and are sucked into the passageway.

And you never know just whose dream you end up in next …

The only way to leave the dreamscape is by being woken up by someone administering the antidote to you, and it will only work once. So if you fall back asleep, remember — if it takes you in again, you will remain under this sleeping spell, unable to wake … at least until the cause of the sickness has been found.

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F Y I

• The events in this log take place during the month of November.

• If you have questions about any of the prompts or the mission in general, please direct them HERE.

• To submit a search request regarding exploring a specific place during any of the prompts, please do so HERE.

• Voting for how the characters will get the orb will go up November 22. Though voting will be done in an OOC post, it is an IC vote in the sense that you should pick a choice your character would ICly make. What the characters choose to do will determine the conclusion of the mission.

• And finally, have a soundtrack for this log! ♪ ♪ ♪

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[ when she says his name, he begins to lower down the gun. this isn't quite right, suddenly remembering everything that comes in between, the after of this very moment, of the fate of harlan's world, of the deal he's made.

the pieces don't fit, because he still feels very much like he's here, like he's been walking for miles with rei, and —

wait, what was it that she had said? no one else was here. no one but he and rei. ] Who's Mom?

[Daisy lowers her hand at the same time he lowers his gun, a few stray tears rolling down her cheeks as the confusion really sets in.]

My mom. She was just here, with you.

[She doesn't sound accusatory this time, if anything she realizes how ridiculous it sounds when she says it out loud. Why would her mom be here?]

[ of course he's immediately confused. it'd only been him and rei here. maybe their memories are somehow colliding in this construct, overlapping and seeing things that aren't there. maybe they're both having their minds fucked with.

he shakes his head, releasing a heavy breath. ]

That was Rei. That ... that was my sister.

What? What are you talk--?

[Daisy cuts herself off when it clicks in her head. He's called her by that name, Rei, a few times now. Suddenly it makes as much sense as it doesn't. Their worlds are completely different, that much she knows, so there's no way.

...Right?]

She's your sister?

[She heard him, but her thoughts are in overdrive now. There's no way her mother could've ended up on another world like that. She saw her die. Twice.]

[ the confusion in clearly evident in both of their eyes, and he's not sure whether it's all more tricks pulled together by the construct. having him here in this body, making him see rei again, it's all already pulling enough at him to taunt what he's lost, and he doesn't even know how he got here in the first place.

daisy being here doesn't align much at all with these memories, having no relation to it, nothing but — ]

Yeah. [ he utters, still trying to catch his breath as he starts to pick himself up, rising back onto his feet with his eyes not leaving her. ] So why are you saying you saw your mom?

Because--

[Daisy licks her lips, trapping her lower lip in her teeth as she debates whether or not to even say it. She knows how crazy it sounds.]

She looks exactly like her.

[She was far enough away at first that she hadn't seen the tattoo.]

[ now that doesn't make any sense at all, a focused look in his stare as he tries to pick apart at that possibility. it's not impossible, technically (rei could have somehow had a child before he reunited with her on harlan's world, maybe she just hadn't said anything at all), but it's still highly unlikely. especially when he's aware they both come from very different worlds. ]

You're ... that's not — [ he shakes his head. ] The construct. It could ... it could just be fucking with our heads.

[It's a possibility, sure, but why would they be seeing the same person?]

I look like her, don't I? It's why you've called me by that name a few times now.

[It doesn't add up why her mother would be in his world, but she's at least connected the dots as to why he's called her Rei now.]

[ she's not wrong. he can remember it, when they first met, that time in the arena when they fought. he'd lost the fight after she'd knock him hard, the momentary concussion stirring his image of her. instead of daisy, he'd seen rei there, features only barely shifting in his mind, the faces so familiar.

how the hell could rei be her mom?

it's only one question of about a thousand, and he falls quiet while they all run repeatedly through his head, until he finally speaks up again. ]

When ... when did you last see her?

[That was going to be complicated to answer, and also difficult on an emotional level. The last two times she saw her, she was dying. Pressing her lips together, Daisy looks away from him for a moment to look around. Half expecting and hoping to see ~~Jiaying~~ Rei again, but also to give her a second to wipe the tears off her cheeks before she's looking at him again.]

1983. Or 2015.

Edited 2021-11-27 02:32 (UTC)

[ neither year seems to correlate with his own timeline, too far back to be in sync, about a century before he or rei were even born. but these days, little makes sense, mixed with people of different worlds, of different times. but even that can make more sense to him than the idea that his sister and daisy's mom could be the same person.

but somehow, even that doesn't feel as significant to figure out as the dampness on her cheeks, her palm smearing the remnants of them on her skin even when she turns away for a moment.

again, he's momentarily quiet before he steps in closer, boots slow along the grass. ]

And what ... happened to her?

[Daisy crosses her arms tightly over her chest as he steps closer to her, looking towards the sky in an attempt to keep from anymore tears spilling.]

She died. Both times.

[ he might have made the guess but her words confirm it, even if enough is said in her posture, in the way she tries to guard herself. the circumstances don't really matter; however she'd been caught up between those two years, it doesn't change the effect it has, how he can see her earnestly try to fight it. ]

I'm sorry. [ he speaks quietly, though he knows his apology has no power, has no meaning. it's just words. ] She ... died for me, too.

How did she--?

[Daisy can't bring herself to finish that sentence and instead crosses her arms around herself protectively.]

How did it happen?

[ it's almost too hard to even return to the idea that rei could really be dead after he'd only just seen her, right here in his arms, her voice as clear from his memory as it'd been when they first had that same conversation out here. he even remembers the very moment before he was taken to the station, seeing the sight of her face hazy over him, almost alive.

he swallows, fingers curling into fists to keep them from shaking. ]

We spend a few years here. With the Envoys. But ... they eventually come for us. She doesn't make it out. None of them do.

[ none of them but me. ]

Envoys?

[It’s a term she’s never heard of before, but her curiosity is short lived because when he explains that she died. That everyone died, except for him, it’s like a punch to the gut.]

I’m sorry.

[She manages to choke out around the lump in her throat, lower lip trembling as more tears threaten to fall.]

Who—?

[Daisy looks skyward briefly, inhaling shakily as she tries to gather herself. It barely works.]

Who came for you guys?

Rebel group. [ that's the easiest way to explain it. how the world saw them. but for him — ] My family.

[ almost as much as rei had been. brothers and sisters he felt like he belonged with. all dead so fast, lifeless at his feet as the ash eventually showers down over him like fallen snow.

he can tell this is making her uneasy. it's only because she asks that he keeps going. ]

The Protectorate. Specifically CTAC — a faction of assassin soldiers that hunt down the most dangerous lawbreakers. The same group I was a part of once.

[Daisy listens intently, even if he's saying a lot of names she's never heard of before. It's not surprising to hear that he's broken the law, and it would be hypocritical of Daisy to judge him for it. He's already proven to her that he's trustworthy.]

That's--

Awful.

[What else could she say? He's had to live with that guilt that he's the sole survivor.]

...How long has it been?

[ he stares down at his hands, scarred marks on his skin not dissimilar to what's scattered on ryker's skin. but the difference is, all these scars are his own, ones he'd earned while fighting for the protectorate, while fighting for the envoys, while fighting alongside rei, alongside quell, alongside his brothers and sisters — his story is all over these hands and he'd almost forgotten what they looked like. ]

It's been more than two hundred and fifty years since I wore this skin. Since I lost them.

[ he'd left it behind, jumped into one new sleeve after another, trying to leave it behind. ]

Since I lost my sister.

[Daisy remembers him saying he was almost three hundred when she asked how old he was, and how most of that time had been spent in prison.]

They caught you, didn't they? That's how you ended up on ice.

Eventually. A few years down the road.

[ when jaeger finally caught him after a few years doing his own dirty work on the side, just to get paid, just to keep running, just to keep surviving like quell told him to. he lost sarah then too, just a partner, someone to keep the nights from getting too quiet, but she never deserved to die. ]

They added a few extra charges, some not even true, and they made sure my sentence was indefinite.

[It doesn't surprise her to hear that they would make up lies to extend his sentence, but she's curious as to why. There's hurt in her eyes, for him. For what he went through. She doesn't know everything he's done, but she knows who he isn't.

Even with this front he puts on, she recognizes it because she does the same thing. Tries to push people away so they can't be hurt, but they need people. As much as they don't want to admit it.]

Why didn't they just kill you? When they found you.

Because killing's easy.

[ especially in an age where there's the stronger possibility for living longer. it's not like he wouldn't have deserved it. hell, he probably deserved the indefinite sentence too. even if not all of the listed crimes were true, it's not like he's without his guilt, without his own long list of sins. even before he'd become an envoy, there's plenty of terrorizing things he'd done in the name of the protectorate.

he's not a good man at all. no matter how much he may try to renounce the past. ]

Man in charge of CTAC — Jaeger — he practically raised me, so ... betraying him was something personal. He'd kill anyone I cared about left alive right in front of me before ever giving me the easy way out.

[He's not wrong, as fucked up as it is. To live as long as he has, even if a good portion of it was unconscious? That's way worse.

Daisy can't imagine living, more or less, forever.]

Is he who--?

[Daisy swallows thickly, looking down at the ground for a moment.]

Did he kill your sister?

[ he doesn't answer immediately, his own eyes turning away just as hers does, taking a breath. because once again, it takes him back to that day, to losing everyone, to losing rei all over again. ]

Not directly.

[ it wasn't as simple as pulling the trigger on her. none of the envoy deaths could be credited to any one person. but the protectorate was clearly to blame. ]

But he is the reason she's dead.

(no subject)

morethan084 - 2022-01-19 01:49 (UTC) - Expand

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